A complete or near-complete absence of all major players
associated with the earlier films, especially the first.

A clearly diminished budget and comparatively rushed production
schedule. Despite presumed advances in special effects technology
over the years since the previous chapters were made, the effects in
the current effort look chintzier than those in the earlier films.

Ah, now I’m becoming more comfortable. This month I’ve experienced a
change of pace by reviewing a classic motion picture, Jaws, and an
average motion picture, Jaws 2. I’m back on familiar ground now,
however, because Jaws 3, not to put too fine a point on things…bites.

Jaws 2 made a good amount of loot, but its box office earnings were
only forty percent, perhaps less, of what its predecessor, er, netted. The
studio obviously thought there were still a few shekels to be squeezed
from the already moribund series, but only under the proper circumstances.
First, of course, the production budget had to be reduced so that a lower
box office take would still provide a profit. Also, some actual reason to
make the movie would help.

The early ‘80s provided that reason via a
mini-renaissance in 3-D movies. As in the ‘50s, audience enthusiam for
the fad proved intense but short-lived. Still, when a cheesy, low-budget
3-D Western named Comin’ at Ya! made some coin in 1981,
independent producers and studios alike started looking for properties
that might benefit from the resurgent technology.

Soon theater audiences were thrilling to further
headache-inducing fare. The fertile period of 1982-84 saw Treasure of
the Four Crowns (Raiders of the Lost Ark retread; this one I
saw myself), Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone (Star
Wars retread, co-starring a young Molly Ringwald), Metalstorm: The
Destruction of Jared-Syn (ditto, sans Molly); Parasite
(combined Mad Max/Alien knock-off, Demi Moore’s first
starring role), Silent Madness (low-grade slasher movie—er, lower
grade than usual, I mean), Dogs of Hell, a.k.a. Rottweiler
(the inevitable Earl Owensby contribution) and Emmanuelle 4 (softcore
porn). Perhaps the most unlikely contribution was the
embarrassing-even-for-Steve-Guttenberg ‘invisible man’ flick The
Man Who Wasn’t There.

The three most memorable entries, however, were chapters
in previously established film series. Pretty much any series that had two
previous movies under its belt found a third chapter being rushed to the
screen. One was Friday the 13th Part 3: 3D. This
provided perhaps the decade’s single most infamous 3-D effect, when
Jason squeezed a victim’s head until an eyeball popped out towards the
audience.

Next there was Amityville 3-D, which featured a
young Meg Ryan. This achieved the impressive feat of making the earlier
Amityville movies look comparatively good.

And then there was the innovatively titled Jaws 3-D*.

[*A word about the title. In theaters it was Jaws 3-D.
On TV and home video, however, the movie is obviously presented ‘flat.’
Presumably for this reason, such prints sport the onscreen title Jaws
III. This remains an odd choice, as the second movie used a regular
numeral, i.e., Jaws 2. This was actually a common problem in the
‘80s. See, for example, Friday the 13th Parts 2 &
3, followed by parts VI, VII, VIII and X. The numbering of the Halloween
series was similarly incoherent.

Making this even goofier is that the ‘Jaws III’
title seen in the movie, as from the DVD I purchased, still ‘comes out’
towards the screen as a 3-D style effect. The video and DVD box art,
however, keep the title as Jaws 3, probably so the titles won’t
look weird when the series sits together on video store shelves.]

Except in cases where it’s too prominent to do so, I’m
going to generally ignore the whole ‘3-D’ thing. It’s too
distracting otherwise. It must be said, though, that watching item after
item being thrust at the camera doesn’t help one keep a straight face
while watching the film on TV. Viewers of a certain age will find
themselves helplessly cracking wise with the Dr. Tongue references.

Whatever faults you may assign them, you can’t fault the
filmmakers for being stingy in the 3-D department. Before the film even
starts, we get the old "globe spinning in space" Universal
Studios logo. In this instance, however, the Earth and the word Universal
grow larger, indicating that they once rushed out towards theater patrons.
One of those benighted viewers, it must be confessed, was the 1983 version
of one Ken Begg.

Next we start the film itself, which like the others,
begins underwater. Our first credit, for "Alan Landsburg Productions
Presents," appears in that boxed Superman: The Movie font, the
one with the trailing Doppler effect. (Oooh! 3-D!) Cue the classic
John Williams ‘duh-duh, duh-duh’ theme. Then we see various fish,
swimming out before us. (Oooh! 3-D!) Suddenly something flashes
across the screen. A cloud of red appears, and the disembodied head of a
huge grouper floats out towards us. (Oooh! 3-D!) Amusingly, the
fish’s mouth is still working.

Then we get the title, projecting out towards us, moving
again like the titles of the Superman series. (Ooo…oh, never
mind.) Apparently never having heard of overkill, the word of the title
are also split horizontally in two, and come crashing together like teeth.
And that’s all in about the film’s first minute and a half. Oh, and
let me take a minute to thank the people behind Jaws III for making
the film a good (well, not good, necessarily) twenty minutes
shorter than Jaws 2. It’s appreciated.

The camera continues moving through the water, providing
us with the classic Jaws shark-POV shot. The main credits begin.
These are also in the Superman font, but unlike the title credit,
don’t actually come shooting out towards us. The film sports an ur-‘80s
cast. The first credit goes to the then-relatively-unknown Dennis Quaid,
who in the same year appeared indelibly in perhaps the greatest American
film of the decade, The Right Stuff.

Next up is Bess Armstrong. 1983 was for her, like Quaid, a
chance to establish herself as a movie star. That year she landed two
female leading roles, both, oddly enough, in pictures that aped earlier
Steven Spielberg movies. One was Jaws 3-D, the other was High
Road to China, a Raiders knock-off starring Spielberg’s first
choice for Indiana Jones, Tom Selleck. (Really. He accepted the role but
had to surrender it when a TV pilot of his was picked up. It resulted in a
show called Magnum P.I. How history could have been different….)

Unlike Quaid, though, Ms. Armstrong failed to make her
mark. (This is presumably at least partly attributable to her starring in
two such awful movies.) She continued to work steadily in film and
especially in TV movies, but never became a star.

Third billed is British actor Simon MacCorkindale, the guy
you get when you can’t afford Michael York. Mr. MacCorkindale remains
most famous on this side of the pond for starring in the classic 1983
television series Manimal*. Boy, that was a pretty good year for
him, huh? He went on to appear in such fine fare as Wing Commander.
(OK, this is a little snide, as MacCorkindale’s actually a pretty decent
actor. He’s just not, it seems, a particularly lucky one. Proof of his
talents can be found in such projects as TV’s I, Claudius.)

[*An amusing piece of trivia: Sixteen years after the show’s
entire nine episode run, MacCorkindale reprised his Manimal role of Prof.
Jonathon Chase in the goofy syndicated superhero series Night Man.
He and Night Man teamed up to capture a time-traveling Jack the Ripper.
Really.]

Then there’s this solo credit: "and LOUIS GOSSETT,
Jr. as "Calvin Bouchard" " Why the big play-up? Gossett had
just won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for 1982’s An Officer and a
Gentleman. Gossett’s august presence was beaten into the ground as
evidence that the filmmakers were committed to actually making Jaws 3-D
a quality film. (This remains somewhat disingenuous, as he obviously must
have taken the job, and even finished the film, before he won the award.)
Gossett, old pro that he was, played along. He appeared in many interviews
talking about the movie’s purportedly high aims.

Sadly, Mr. Gossett’s appearance here marked the
beginning of his learning an old, painful and bitter lesson: Winning an
Oscar does not guarantee a career full of rich, intelligently-written
roles in high profile movies. Lest he thought Jaws 3-D an anomaly,
1985-86 must have set him wise. That’s when he starred in Iron Eagle
and Jabootu subject Firewalker. This period also saw his last
starring role in a major film, Wolfgang Petersen’s Enemy Mine.
His co-star in the essentially two-man feature was Dennis Quaid. It has
its fans, but tanked at the box office, dooming Gossett to junkier
pictures. This situation mired the actor in such fare as Iron Eagle II,
Dolph Lundgren’s The Punisher, Aces: Iron Eagle III, Iron
Eagle IV, and an
appearance as Commander Clash in Captain Planet.

Also on hand is a young Lea Thompson, three years before
starring in Howard the Duck. She and Quaid met on the movie and
ended up engaged to be married for a while. Then there’s John Putch.
Putch has remained a busy actor, but later moved into directing.
Jabootuites might recall his insipid Killer Meteor movie, Tycus.
All in all, it’s an impressive lineup, isn’t it?

The director of Jaws 3-D was Joe Alves. Alves is
one of the few holdovers from the earlier two Jaws entries, for
which he was Production Designer and Second Unit Director. (Carl Gottlieb,
who co-wrote the scripts for the previous two movies, also had a hand in
this.) Jaws 3-D was the only film he ever helmed, proving that
occasionally Hollywood does manage to learn a lesson.

It’s his career as Production Designer, though, that
will draw the Jabootuite’s sustained attention. He first worked in this
capacity in Jaws and Close Encounters of the Third Kind,
then a third time for Jaws 2. Oddly, after those obvious successes
he only worked as a PD twice in the ‘80s, for Escape from New York
and America’s All-American. Trivia fans will note that the latter
starred Jaws 3-D’s Dennis Quaid.

In the ‘90s, however, Alves’ PD duties really racked
up the Jabootuian credits. 1992 saw Freejack; 1993 the over-earnest
and historically-revisionist Geronimo: An American Legend; 1994 the
silly Wesley Snipes skydiving action flick Drop Zone. It was 1997
when he really hit his stride however, PDing both the legendarily inept
Charlie Sheen political thriller Shadow Conspiracy and Steven
Seagal’s hideously awful eco-actioner The Fire Down Below.

Let’s see…what else? John Williams didn’t score this
one (surprise). The film’s original music was written instead by one
Alan Parker, who is not, lest you were wondering, the director Alan
Parker. Mr. Parker the composer has scored several dozen movie and TV
projects over the years, of which Jaws 3-D is probably the most
prominent. What a sad note that is. As you might have suspected, Mr.
Parker’s work will not prove up to Williams’ work on the first two
movies.

Williams, of course, gets his own credit, for "SHARK
THEME". Equally lame is the "Suggested By the Novel JAWS By
PETER BENCHLEY" card. If you say so. The most painful credit of all,
however, follows that. For the screenplay is blamed on, er, credited to
Richard Matheson (!!!) and Carl Gottlieb. (Oh, Mr. Matheson! How could
this have happened? You make me sad.) Meanwhile, there’s a ‘Story By’
credit for the aptly named Guerdon Trueblood.

Then there’s…there’s…dammit, I can’t think of
anything else to waste time with. OK, OK, back to the movie.

Back, finally, to our Feature Presentation. By this time
we’ve moved above the water, following a line of synchronized water
skiers performing in a Water Follies sort of deal. (One of the team is
Thompson, appropriated attired in a wee bikini. Hubba hubba.) However, we
also see the line of skiers from underwater, as the Jaws theme
plays. Sure enough, a shark fin soon crests the water.

Suddenly the group’s newly formed human pyramid
collapses and they fall into the water. We see them treading water from
below in traditional Jaws movie fashion. Then, in a bit right out of a ‘50s
sci-fi cheapie (and not a good one), the boat’s engine stalls. Luckily,
though, at just the last second, the engine restarts and the unsuspecting
skiers are pulled to safety. That was…too close!!

For what it’s worth, as least this chapter of the Jaws
saga isn’t set on Amity Island. Instead, the environs are a Sea World
park, a new facility due to open the following week. They actually use the
venue’s real name instead of something like WaterWorld, so presumably
Sea World and Universal were part of the same conglomerate.

The fact that the park’s soon to open provides an
opportunity for much exposition via press tours and the like. For
instance, there’s a huge complex with viewing chambers connected by
transparent walkways set forty feet beneath the surface of the facility’s
massive artificial Lagoon. (Three guesses where this is going.) Wait, are
you sure Michael Crichton didn’t write this?

This brings us to Gossett’s Calvin Bouchard, who is,
naturally, the entrepreneur who built the place. (I mean, what else would
he be playing?) Think of it as an early dry run, well, wet run for Samuel
Jackson in Deep Blue Sea.

Bouchard watches his team of water skiers as they return
to the park’s immense Lagoon. Behind them, still unnoticed by all, is
the shark fin. The skiers go through the entryway to the Sea World Lagoon,
and the gate starts closing behind them. This is played for suspense, but
loses. For some reason, in any case, the gate jams. (Was the shark
supposed to have been caught in it? Who knows?) Then comes the line that
let’s us know how much trouble we’re in: "Somebody get Mike
Brody!"

Thaaat’s right, the film’s main character is one
Mike Brody, son of Martin and Ellen. Yep, after very, very nearly being
eaten by massive sharks at the age of 12 and then again at 17 (situations
so fearful they apparently turned his hair orange, as he’s played here
by Dennis Quaid), Brody decided to become a professional scuba diver, one
who now does underwater work at the new park. It’s a small world, isn’t
it? And guess who else is on hand? His brother Sean (John Putch)!

In point of fact, the Brody kids end up appearing in all
four Jaws films, although the boys are played by different actors each
time around. (This makes Lorraine Gary the series’ most consistent star;
she played Ellen three times to Roy Scheider’s two turns as her
husband.) I don’t know if they’ll ever make another one of these—stranger
things have happened—but here’s a piece of advice: Don’t make the
Brody family part of any future movies. Seriously, the whole thing
with them is getting more than a little silly. I’d say the presence of a
big shark would be enough ‘continuity’ for a Jaws entry. Really,
somebody let this clan have some piece of mind.

Then there’s the age of the characters. Here are the
stats through the first three films:

Michael:

Film
ActorActor’s Age When Film Released

Jaws
Chris Rebello 12 (1975)

Jaws 2
Mark Gruner 19 (1978)

Jaws 3-D
Dennis Quaid 29 (1983)

Sean:

Film
ActorActor’s Age When Film Released

Jaws
Jay Mello No birth date
provided, I’m guessing he was about five or six in 1975

Jaws
2 Mark
Gilpin 12 (1978)

Jaws 3-D
John Putch 22 (1983)

One immediately apparent fact is that the boys appear to
be suffering from an extremely rare variant of progeria, a usually fatal
disease that causes accelerated aging in children. I’m assuming the
condition is hereditary, although I suppose its cause could conceivably be
environmental. In any case, each brother ages about six years between
1975 and ’78, and another ten years between ’78 and ’83. Thus a ‘Brody
Year’ would indicate aging the rough equivalent of two years during
every twelve-month period, just as dogs age seven ‘years’ for every
human one.

Luckily, medical science presumably came to the rescue
shortly after the events of this film. When next we see the Brody boys in
1987 (during Jaws: The Revenge), their condition has apparently
gone into remission. Sean, in the guise of actor Mitchell Anderson, is 26
at that time, meaning that he has aged normally over that four-year span.
Unfortunately, this medical miracle didn’t make him shark-proof. Anyway,
that’s for next week.

Even more amazing are Michael’s circumstances. The
therapy that halted Sean’s accelerated aging hasactually
reversed Michael’s aging process. For when we meet up with Michael
in 1987 (as played by The Last Starfighter’s Lance Guest), he’s
at that time 27 years old, two years younger than he was here in 1983*.

[*Assuming this rate of de-growth stays consistent,
Michael will cease to exist somewhere around the year 2042. Meanwhile, had
Sean lived out the events of Jaws: The Revenge (oops, sorry), he
would have actually become older than his older brother sometime in 1988.]

In any case, we now meet the latest edition of Mike. He’s
the crew chief for the underwater maintenance guys, and a Firm Yet Beloved
Leader. (As played by Quaid, this is actually somewhat believable.) They
establish that the gate doors have been knocked off their tracks—bum
bum bum—and Mike orders his men to get them fixed.

This vital task completed, Mike jumps on a jet scooter and
travels over to the where the various animals are kept. After the film
briefly pauses to inform us that the dolphins (or an unreasonable
facsimile thereof) have been nudging at their gates, as if trying to get
out of the Lagoon—bum bum bum—Mike moves on. We see Cindy and
Sandy, chattering dolphins in a tank, working with their human. Hey, the
film’s set in Sea World. What did you expect?

Mike gambols on over the park’s architecture until he
finds Kay (Bess Armstrong—does anyone over the age of thirty work in
this park?). She’s in a tight wetsuit—hubba hubba—and riding around
on Shamu. I guess all killer whales in parks are called Shamu. Kay and
Mike, we quickly learn, are a couple. You know, this place doesn’t seem
to have a very big staff. Moreover, you’d think there’d be a lot of
workmen around, getting things ready for the opening next week. It’s
almost as if this facility has actually been up and running for a while.

Dan and Liz, two of the animal handlers, come to report
that Sandy and Cindy are resisting being put in the Lagoon. (Are we all
getting this yet? The dolphins don’t like the Lagoon all of a sudden. It’s
as if…something eeee-vil is in there.) For what it’s worth,
actress Armstrong really interacts well with the obviously well-trained
Shamu. Even if the film didn’t boost her career, I’m sure she had a
blast working with the animals.

Outside the park, the local press is gathered to watch
Bouchard greet the famous adventurer and undersea explorer, Philip
FitzRoyce (MacCorkindale). I think he’s supposed to be sort of a Jacques
Cousteau type, only played as more of publicity hound. Meanwhile, an
off-duty Mike and Kay meet up with the just-arrived Sean, a hunky dude in
a cowboy hat and boots. Ah, the ‘80s, when Urban Cowboys freely roamed
the land.

At this point we’re about thirteen minutes in. The odd
thing is that most of the film seems obviously geared to kids. The
chittering dolphins, the frolicking whale, the aggressively whimsical
music, the sheer, 1950’s-ish sunny happiness of our three young leads.
You almost expect Gidget and Moondoggie to pop up.

We get back to business, however, as we watch a lone diver
enter the water alongside the now-repaired gate. (Of course, any reputable
firm would likely fire a worker who went diving alone like this. I can’t
imagine how many safety rules this breaks.) The ominous music cues us to
expect something, well, ominous. Down below, he secures the gate with what
the sort of chain and lock you’d use to safeguard a bicycle. Is this how
they secure their massive gate to the Lagoon? Every night a guy swims down
with a bike chain and locks the doors together?

The guy, who’s sans scuba gear (yeah, that’s a good
idea), is obviously edgy. He keeps darting around, but doesn’t see
anything unusual. Which, of course, is followed by him being attacked once
he turns back towards the gate. A series first is achieved when we get a
bloody shot from inside the shark’s mouth (!). This is followed by the
image of the fellow’s disembodied arm, the bluescreen lines around the
fingers especially evident. This object is seen, lest I need to say it,
drifting slowly towards the camera, ooky end towards the audience. *Gasp!
Choke!*

We cut to a large, crowded and mildly funky bar. Kay,
Mike, and Sean are throwing back a couple. Their barmaid, meanwhile, wears
an outfit that I think was featured in every bad ‘80s movie, complete
with rolled pink headband straining to contain her poofy hair. The scene
features a lot of light profanity, and let’s just say that Quaid is very
convincing playing an inebriated person. Again I found myself wondering
just who they were aiming this movie at.

Two of the bar patrons are playing ‘standoff,’ a game
where the participants face each other, assume a stance, and then press or
slap hands together, trying to knock the other off-balance. "Uh,
oh," Mike tells Kay. "My brother considers himself to be the
standoff champion of New England." Sean goes to throw his (literal)
hat in the ring, only to find that the reigning victor is Kelly (Lea
Thompson). Since she’s about 5’ 5" and must weigh quite nearly a
hundred pounds, her mastery of this sport seems unlikely. They try to
offset such sexist notions, however, by having her shout, "I tell
you, it’s a game of balance!"

Sean, standing a good 6’ tall, pauses in dismay before
challenging his diminutive opponent. She grins, but her expression quickly
chances when he proves steady on his feet. After a non-too epic struggle
lasting a good ten seconds, Sean says, "My fly’s open." Kelly
looks down and he pushes her off her feet. I have to admit, I was
surprised they let the big guy beat the little gal, even through
subterfuge.

Meet Cute accomplished, the two shuffle back to Mike and
Kay’s table. Sean, we learn, has developed quite a smooth ways with the
ladies, especially the drunk ones trolling in bars. (And even though
Armstrong is a good-looking woman, you could see what drew Quaid to
Thompson and vice versa. They both have that impossibly attractive
hell-raiser thing going.) Meanwhile, a little exposition establishes Kay
and Mike’s relationship as a fairly long-term one. Frankly, if the movie
were in fact more of an Urban Cowboy sort of deal, centered on
these four, it probably would have been a much better movie.

Cut back to the park. In a set-up whose ultimate finale
seems clear, two civilian scalawags in scuba gear sneak towards the
Lagoon, apparently hoping to "cop a lot of good stuff." (Like
what, a gar?) After freaking out the theatrical audience with a projecting
3-D reed, the two move on. There’s a lot of swearing here, and I was
surprised what you could get away with while maintaining a PG rating, even
back in ’83.

Back to the Leads. Taking their leave, Mike and Kay head
off for a romantic, if drunken, moonlit stroll on the beachfront next to
the tavern. Kelly, for her part, suggests a swim to Sean. "No,"
he somewhat nervously answers, "I hate the ocean." (Nice touch,
there, I have to admit.) She suggests the Lagoon, and he goes along. Hey,
who wouldn’t?

In any case, I’m sure we all appreciate the IRONY. Sean
doesn’t like the ocean because of his past experiences with sharks. So
instead, he agrees to go to the Lagoon, which we know contains a killer
shark!!

Out on the beach, Kay asks Mike why Sean doesn’t visit
more. "He hates the water," Mike replies. "Remember that
shark attack I told you about?" (What, he only told her about one of
them?) This supposedly explains why Sean is attending college out in
Colorado. "If our parents didn’t live on a island, I don’t think
he’d ever get wet. My dad, he’s the same way," he offers.

This is nice stuff, actually, and Quaid delivers it well.
However, it’s still making the best of a ridiculous situation, that
being the Brody family’s continual encounters with monstrous sharks.
Again, watching the scenes without the shark, the ones centering on the
four leads and their personal lives, makes you wish you were watching
another movie entirely.

Or maybe not. Suddenly, we veer into different terrain
entirely. Mike reveals that he’s received a much anticipated job offer
in Venezuela. However, taking the job means he’ll be gone for eighteen
months. Kay, meanwhile, has her work here, and then a job set up with the
Scripps Institute. Ah, the Road of Love is seldom well-paved or adequately
marked with those little inset reflecty-dealies for nighttime drivers.

Of course, the idea is that now they’re wondering if
their love will survive, and only when they face losing each other—the
shark, remember the shark?—will they realize that the only important
thing blah blah blah. The insertion of this soap opera material
seems a little strange in a killer shark movie lasting all of 97 minutes,
but there you go. I guess this was somebody’s idea of characterization.
They’re just lucky they got the actors they did. In hands less capable
than Quaid and Armstrong’s, this stuff would be gruesome to watch.

Cut to the Lagoon. Sean and Kelly (fetchingly wearing Sean’s
hat, her shirt and blue bikini bottoms) are running around the grounds in
pre-carnal anticipation. She strips down to her bikini—mercy, I’m
getting the vapors—and then she tries to lead him into the Lagoon.
"Oh, I don’t swim," he answers. However, the lure of Eros
overcomes the power of Phobos, and he indeed joins her.

He stays on shore to take off his boots and disrobe.
Kelly, meanwhile, begins her swim. I don’t think I have to draw anyone a
map, here; this is a replay of the Chrissie Watkins sequence in Jaws.

Meanwhile, in what I guess is supposed to be another
section of the Lagoon, we cut back to the scuba thieves currently floating
around in a rubber raft. Am I following this right? How big is this Lagoon
supposed to be? I’ll buy that it’s the size of a small lake, and that
maybe Sean and Kelly are sufficiently far away from them to be unaware of
their presence. However, the area the thieves are in is covered in fog.
I can only imagine that these two scenes were originally meant to take
place at different times, and were later cut together during editing.
Either that, or it’s a pretty hilarious continuity error.

The thieves provide handy exposition about how they’re
here to steal pieces of the Lagoon’s reef. "A guy in Miami’ll
give us $200 for the good stuff," one helpfully notes*. Yes, I guess
that really does explain it. Don’t worry, my friends. I’m sure your
activities here will garner you everything you deserve.
Bwahahahahaha.

[*As Jabootu Minister Carl Fink notes, "Coral
poaching is real. Salt-water aquarists literally pay for smuggled live
corals, which are illegal to collect because the collectors were (and are)
destroying whole reefs." It sounds to me like this situation could
therefore result in that long-anticipated Jaws/Captain Planet team-up.]

One guy dives below with a bucket, which is tied to a
line. He’ll put pieces of the reef in it, and his compatriot will bring
the material back up in the boat. Anyway, I guess I was wrong about the
two scenes not being meant to occur together, as the guy still in the boat
hears Sean and Kelly laughing in the distance. I’m still not getting the
localized fog thing, however.

In a pretty funny scene, Mike and Kay drive through the
park and see Kelly’s parked car. Figuring out what’s going on, they
mischievously sneak over to the Lagoon with a bullhorn. Spotting Sean’s
clothes on the beach, Mike is amazed. "I don’t believe it," he
blurts. "She got him in the water."

Scuttling down to the shore, they play a flashlight over
the necking couple. Mike assumes an officious voice and orders them out of
the water over the bullhorn. "I’m okay," Sean shouts. "My
brother works here." Realizing who’s behind the bullhorn, the two
rush ashore and Sean jumps Mike. (Luckily, if counterintuitively, Sean
still has his underpants on. It’s fortunate for Mike, though, that he
and Kay didn’t happen along five or ten minutes later.) This isn’t
brilliant stuff, but it’s really not bad, either. I’m not kidding,
this movie’s a lot more entertaining in the non-shark parts.

The noise emanating from all this makes the thief in the
raft nervous. His anxiety is exacerbated when his friend’s light
disappears and something begin tugging at the bucket line. He tries to
grab a firmer hold and is pulled into the water. He surfaces briefly, only
to be yanked back under the water. This is followed by the raft
mysteriously imploding and sinking from sight. I guess the shark is
covering its tracks.

Cut to the morning. Mike and an apparently hung-over Sean
are having breakfast in the kitchen, while Kay comes through on her way to
work. This scene, I assume, is Matheson’s work, although perhaps
Gottlieb supplied it. In any case, it’s a nice echo of the first two
movies, each of which contained a scene of the family dining together.
Putch proves a pretty decent actor, and after Kay departs he and Quaid
have a pretty good scene together. It’s interesting to watch Mike and
Sean together. In the first two films they were still kids, and their age
difference was too great to make their hanging out logical.

Mike gets a call from Bouchard and has to leave to go to
work. We cut to the park, for several more minutes of Kay and her staff
running the dolphins through their, er, paces. I’m guessing the reduced
budget meant they only had enough dough to show the shark for a limited
amount of time, and that they’re saving it for the latter half of the
movie.

Kay is annoyed to seeing FitzRoyce hanging around. I think
it’s because she’s a Serious Scientist and he’s a mere publicity
hound. (In real life, I imagine most such workers would love to have, say,
Steve Irwin show up at their facility. It would be sure to raise their
attendance rates.) Here we learn that Kay is, in fact, "Dr. Morgan,
the senior biologist." Wow, she must have been quite the prodigy to
graduate from college, earn her doctorate and work her way up to being
part of the senior staff at this new, deca-million dollar park while still
in her twenties.

Mike is seen doing general maintenance work. Suddenly an
irate Charlene, the waitress from the bar, shows up. (Good grief, doesn’t
this place have any security? It’s not even open yet!) She throws
a bag at him. See, she’s been living with the worker who got kacked at
the gate earlier. Remember? It seems so long ago, doesn’t it? Anyway,
she assumes he’s sleeping, er, elsewhere, and she’s kicking him out. I’m
not sure why she’d go to Mike, though. Oh, wait, it’s because
otherwise we wouldn’t know what was going on.

I’ve noted in my reviews of the prior two movies that
while sharp-but-believable dialog was a hallmark of Jaws, it was
noticeably lacking in Jaws 2. Ditto the third time around. Here’s
a classic bit of writing:

Charlene: "You tell Shelby Overmann [that’s
the guy’s name] for me he can take a flyin’ leap at a rollin’
doughnut on a gravel driveway, you hear?"

I’m just surprised she didn’t end that statement by
ordering Shelby to ‘kiss my grits.’

Mike, however, is concerned. Shelby didn’t show up for
work, either. Despite the fact that they find his credit card and driver’s
license among his belongings (dude, they have these things called ‘wallets’
now—check it out), they aren’t particularly worried. Shelby has a
history of disappearing on benders. Still, Mike and Kay quietly go to
check out the Lagoon, trying not to worry Charlene.

This allows them to introduce a teeny, two-man Sea World
submersible. You’ve got to figure they made an inventory of stuff they
could use in a movie and presented it to Matheson and Gottlieb, telling
them "work all this stuff into the movie, would you?" Somewhere
there was a Sea World tax attorney in a blissful mood at all the extra
write-offs this situation provided.

Kay and Mike enter the sub. A staff member alerts the
Control Room that the vehicle is entering the water. We cut to this
chamber, which proves to be hilariously oversized. Filled with monitors
and control boards and not entirely convincing computer banks, it’s
dominated by the obligatory giant viewscreen. This is currently tied into
the Lagoon’s underwater cameras so as to supervise their expedition. The
result is an image, complete with a thick bluescreen border, of a large,
detailed yet patently bogus model of the aforementioned underwater complex
supposedly lying four stories under the Lagoon’s surface.

The submersible moves through the gigantic Lagoon,
providing some appallingly bad special effects. It’s like something you’d
see in a Toho picture, such as Latitude Zero, made decades earlier.
A couple of large stones, meanwhile, are matted into the foreground of the
shot to provide a sense of depth for those long-ago viewers who could see
the film in 3-D. Certainly they’re worse than you would have seen in an
episode of, say, Thunderbirds Are Go!

As the sub moves past the control chamber, we see that it
too is set some stories under the surface of the Lagoon. Moreover, what I
had thought was the viewscreen is in fact a giant window (uh, oh!)
looking out over the underwater complex. Which means the special effect
work is even more inept than I’d assumed. I have to say, moreover, that
the Lagoon’s waters are amazingly well lit for this depth.

I’m not kidding, the bluescreen work here is awful. At
one point a section of the sub’s forward window noticeably turns
transparent and disappears, like parts of Glenn Manning did in The
Amazing Colossal Man. (Of course, that film was made nearly three
decades earlier by shoestring hyphenate Bert I. Gordon. Gordon worked out
of his garage and the film probably didn’t cost much north of $20,000
dollars. Jaws 3-D, meanwhile, boasted a production budget of $18 million.)

The *cough, cough* submersible goes past the large
model tunnel-like structure that represents one of the Lagoon’s massive
filtration pipes, a subject upon which they deliver a wad of exposition.
In other words, they’re establishing them for some plot purpose later.
Mike notes that if Shelby died while locking the gate, his body would have
been carried by the tide to this central area of the Lagoon.

It wouldn’t, however, end up in one of the pipes, as the
outgoing water pressure would be too strong. "The flow’s all into
the Lagoon," he notes. "There’s a million gallons of fresh
salt water every hour." (Uh, wouldn’t Kay already know that? It
would certainly affect the health of the sea animals living in the
Lagoon.) In any case, they move on, although the camera stays on the
nearest huge pipe and we hear a Significant Ominous Music Sting.

They head towards the Lagoon’s ersatz sunken Spanish
Galleon. A cheap shock sting is provided when the camera cuts to an
equally bogus pirate skeleton sitting in the water. Of course, cheap shock
stings are de rigueur for 3-D movies, so no foul there. Funnier is that
the skeleton’s arm is propped up on a rock, so that as the camera
approaches its bony hand projects out towards the audience. Oooh,
spoooky. Then the camera approaches a hole in the galleon’s hull and
suddenly two dolphins shoot out of it—right at the audience!! Whoa,
Nellie!!

Mike goes to see if the body might have washed into the
galleon’s interior. He tells Kay to stay inside the submersible
(actually, what’s she doing in it in the first place?), but of course
she demands to go along.

The dolphins (I guess) act like they’re trying to warn
them about something. Nonetheless, the two disembark. Here we become
reacquainted with a rule of filmmaking first illuminated during the
earliest days of cinema: It’s really, really hard to make a scuba scene
suspenseful, because by necessity the divers have to move so slowly. You
can portray many things with such scenes, including peacefulness, an
otherworldly quality, startling beauty, etc. Anything that requires action
or speed of movement, however, is more than a little tricky.

So the two sloooowly make their way into the artfully
ruptured hold of the galleon, which is strangely well lit inside. They
look around, and at one point we cut to a moray eel. I guess this probably
projected out towards the audience, but otherwise its inclusion here is
bizarre, as it’s quite apparently nowhere near Our Heroes. They might as
well have cut to a leopard hiding up in a tree.

Suddenly one of the dolphins reappears, chittering and
waving its head to and fro in warning. Sure enough, a rigid one-piece
plastic shark soon smashes into the rim of the hole in the galleon. (?)
This is a normal-sized shark, though; big enough to be dangerous (they
later say it’s ten feet in length) without being ludicrous.

This leads to a ‘suspense’ sequence where our two
leads slowly swim away to elude their demise. Real footage of a great
white shark is cut in here. To make the scene goofier, it’s been sped
up, as if the beast were chasing Benny Hill. Moreover, in one shot the
shark has a rope trailing from its mouth. The shark seen in the next piece
of stock footage is sans this stylish accessory.

Just when you almost maybe believe that perhaps somehow
the footage of the shark will in some sort of manner possibly interact
with the entirely discrete footage of the actors, the dolphins come to the
ersatz rescue. Mike and Kay grab a hold of their dorsal fins and are
whisked to safety. And so we watch the sped-up dolphins guiding the
actors, then the Benny Hill shark footage, then the sped-up dolphins, then
the Benny Hill shark footage and so on.

Finally, the actors, skimming along the surface of the
Lagoon on now-bogus dolphins, find themselves pursued by what has the be
the single fakest shark fin the series treats us to. And yes, I include
the cardboard one the two kids in Jaws use to precipitate the beach
panic. Anyhoo, a big *cough* suspense moment occurs when Kay (who
unlike Mike trains with the animals professionally—still, it’s always
the girls, isn’t it?) slips off her dolphin and they cut to a shot of a
shark that’s closer to the camera as compared to the previously seen
shark footage and then, suddenly, just when she should have been eaten ten
or twenty seconds ago, the dolphin reappears and again drags her to
safety. Whew!

The chase reaches its exciting climax when the dolphins
reach the pier containing the tunnel that connects the Lagoon to the
performance area. Mike and Kay exhaustedly climbed up onto the ground,
yelling for the nearby Dan to close the tunnel gate. He runs over to the
panel and does so, right before the shark can follow the dolphins through.
(Since this is a movie, its assumed we find the dolphins’ fate of more
account than that of any of the mere humans.)

This leads to a pretty funny effects shot. They use a ‘ramming
shark’ to smash into the gate. However, the impact causes the prop’s
head to snap a ways back into its own body, like a stage knife’s
retractable blade. This creates a noticeable fat fold where the rubber
skin doubles up on itself. Like the seconds when we can clearly see the
shark’s mechanical guts in Jaws 2, this quick shot must have been
a scream to watch on a giant theater screen. (Unfortunately, my
twenty-year old memories on the subject have faded.)

Up on the dock, still lying upon the prone and
equally-frightened Kay (I’ll wager Quaid slipped the director five bucks
for arranging this shot), Mike shouts, "What the hell is that?! What
is that?!" Of all people, you’d think he’d know a shark when he
saw one. Perhaps he’s just not used to seeing such a small example of
one.

In the park’s fancy restaurant, Bouchard is dining with
FitzRoyce and the latter’s man, Jack. (All rich English guys’ have a
‘man,’ don’t you know.) Here we learn that FitzRoyce is, in fact,
the 16th Earl of Haddenfield—which I believe is where the murderous Sir
Michael Myers hails from—which of course has nothing pertinent to do
with anything.

An attendant comes over to inform Bouchard about the shark
situation. The three men head over to the Lagoon, where Kay fills them in.
"It was a great white," she breathlessly explains. "Ten
feet long, exhibiting a typical feeding pattern." (Typical for this
series of movies, certainly.) Hearing this, FitzRoyce’s mind starts
working.

"You, know Calvin," he opines, "this could
be a stroke of luck. If we kill this beastie on camera…" Smoking a
small cigar and mugging ferociously to suggest a loveable, thrill-seeking
daredevil, MacCorkindale’s performance suggests an actor who arrived at
his room at the Ramada the day before filming started, saw an episode of
the A-Team while unpacking, and decided to base his performance on
George Peppard’s Hannibal Smith. In fact, if Dirk "Face"
Benedict had played Smith on the show instead, and used a British accent
while doing so, you’d have gotten the exact same result.

FitzRoyce’s impromptu plan is to have the shark lured
into the smaller performance area, go into the water with it and, "at
the precise moment, slit his belly wide open." Calvin is intrigued,
given the publicity possibilities. Kay, meanwhile, is appalled. She wants
the shark captured. Normally I’d roll my eyes at that sort of thing, but
here it works. As she notes, there’s never been a living great white in
captivity. As a marine biologist, you can actually understand her
excitement.

In a nice moment, though, Mike sides not with his
girlfriend, but with FitzRoyce. Given his history with great whites, he
unsurprisingly agrees that it should be killed, and as quickly as
possible. (Oddly, though, nobody seems concerned with what it’s going to
do to the Lagoon’s ecosystem. I’m assuming Bouchard spent major bucks
stocking it with sea life—a project presumably overseen by Kay—and an
animal like this would have to be burning through its inhabitants pretty
steadily*.)

[*Back to Minister Fink, whose experience suggests
otherwise: "I once worked at the Discovery Center, a science museum
in Florida. Our reptiles would last for years, but we expected (and the
bosses budgeted) to replace the sea life regularly. Life spans in
captivity just aren't that great. Our big tank of rays, for instance, had
to be completely restocked three times in one summer. Real natural lagoons
support a lot more than one shark. Most of them are under ten feet, but
still, such a shark is no threat to the balance of a good-sized lagoon's
ecosystem." On the other hand, as we’ll see later…]

In the end, Kay knows how to win over Bouchard—money.
This is because capitalists in movies always put money before all else, of
course. On the other hand, Bouchard proves surprisingly dense at seeing
such opportunities, considering how Kay needs to spell out the obvious
benefits of capturing the animal alive. She notes how many people would
come to see the world’s only captive great white. Moreover, unlike
FitzRoyce’s plan, the publicity and attendance generated by capturing
and containing the fish would be continuing, rather than a one shot deal.
Dollar signs all but dancing across his eyes, Calvin agrees.

FitzRoyce himself sees the benefits of what she’s
talking about, and takes Kay’s side. We cut to him getting ready to
capture the shark. He filled a large hypodermic needle with the
tranquilizer, which is used to load the drug into a dart. Naturally when
he squeezes the air out of the needle, a stream of fluid shoots right
into the audience!Whooaaa!!

Kay notices FitzRoyce’s bright red wetsuit. "The
color of your wetsuit’s one hell of a choice," she opines.
"The shark’s gonna love you." In point of fact, that’s
correct, sharks aren’t colorblind. Kay is going in too, although she’s
wearing a chain mail anti-shark suit. Mike is naturally concerned for her—again,
consider his history—and asks if the suit will really protect her.
FitzRoyce provides the answer she avoids giving. "It won’t bite
through," he explains, "but it will yield to pressure." And
sharks, of course, exert a lot of pressure when biting. So they got this
right as well, although I found it a little insulting that any intelligent
adult, like Mike, would need this explained to him.

In an obvious Expository Moment, FitzRoyce attaches two
‘Mills bombs," or grenades, to his belt. (Mills bombs, named for
Sir Williams Mills, were the standard British grenade in WWI.) "Baby
claymores," he explains, although claymores are mines, not grenades.
"Good horizontal dispersion." Just in case, you know.

This info doesn’t sound entirely correct to me, although
I’m no expert on ordnance. And why use a seventy-year-old grenade
design, at that? (Now, if you’re talking pistols, it would be because
Webley revolvers and Broomhandle Mauser semi-autos still look totally
bitchin’.) FitzRoyce does note that he has them made for him, so I guess
they could be modified to his design.

Actually, in the end they make him leave the grenades
topside, so it doesn’t matter anyway. At least until later in the movie,
one supposes.

The whole crew motors out onto the Lagoon on a sort of
mobile barge/platform. Some of the real-life equipment here is pretty
interesting. It sports a border of underwater lights, which realistically
might draw the shark to them. (Killing a fish or just thrashing in the
water would, you’d think, do as well or better.)

Kay, FitzRoyce and Jack go into the water. Bouchard,
meanwhile, is monitoring the situation down in the comically large control
room. Kay has a bang-stick loaded with drugs. Up on the platform surface,
Mike waits with a high-powered crossbow that fires a dart with a length of
rope attached. (He’d have to be quite a marksman to hit something as
small as a fin, moving through the water in the dark. I suppose his dad
might have taught him to shoot, but still.)

This actually isn’t a bad little sequence. Going
underwater to draw a potentially man-eating shark to you, even a
normal-sized one, is an undeniably anxious situation. In any case, this is
probably the film’s most effective shark-related sequence. (Of course,
since the others tend to be laugh-out-loud funny, that’s not saying
much.)

Of course, the shark suddenly smacks into Kay’s back
while she’s being filmed in a tight shot. The effect is somewhat ruined
because they’re using that rigid fiberglass fish I mentioned earlier,
which is patently being shoved at her by an off-camera prop guy. The shark
gets a grip on her scuba gear and starts pulling her away.

FitzRoyce comes to the rescue with a knife he draws from
an ankle sheath. (That’s what he brought to the party? Just like
a Brit, bringing a knife to a shark fight.) He taps the prop shark on its
sensitive nose, and it disengages, turning briefly back into the Benny
Hill Sped-Up Stock Footage Shark.

The shark runs for it, although for some reason (IITS) it
surfaces to do this rather than diving deeper into the water. The divers
pop up, yelling for Mike to hurry up and shoot it with the crossbow dart.
Of course, the crossbow won’t work at first—I think maybe he had the
safety on, although I couldn’t say for sure—but it fires a second
later. This is probably the film’s most fun 3-D shot: Mike, against a
totally black background, firing a dart that travels towards the camera on
a quite evident wire, like when Moe tossed a cake during one of the 3-D
Three Stooges shorts.

The way the scene is filmed, it would obviously take a
miraculous shot to tag the projecting shark fin in this light and at the
sizeable distance indicated, but of course, Mike provides one. A large red
ball attached to the line indicates the shark’s position. (This,
naturally, is a nod to the yellow barrels Quint used so prominently in the
first movie.)

We cut back to the Benny Hill shark. I really have to
wonder, whose idea was that? It’s really a dumb one, and the
hyperkinetic fish provokes laughter every time we see it. I understand the
problem they were facing. As I noted before, things generally move slowly
enough underwater so as to at least somewhat denude them of menace.

However, in this case the cure is definitely worse than
the disease. It’s not so much that they tried it—although I don’t
think there’s one example in the history of film in which audiences were
ever fooled by sped-up film—but that they left it in the film after
seeing how it looked. I’m sure the makers of this chapter were
victimized by a cruelly-small budget, but still, you don’t have to
actively shoot yourself in the foot, either.

In any case, the shark swims right back over Kay, for no
apparent reason, and she sticks the dart in it. The divers return to the
platform, and eventually haul the shark up via the rope line. Setting it
in a sling, they move it to a tank in a park’s research lab.

I’m not sure how they’d keep the shark from
suffocating during the transportation process, not to mention after they
knocked it out. Most sharks, including great whites, derive their oxygen
by driving water through their gills while swimming. Dolphins and whales
can be transported this way because they’re mammals and have lungs. This
is probably partly why there’s never been a successfully live-captured
great white.

Once in the tank, Kay and Liz, one of her subordinates,
begin walking it around, trying to oxygenate the fish and bring it around.
(By the way, how did they guess the proper dosage of the tranquiller?)
This is the procedure that would be used in such situations. Despite this,
though, this is not one of the film’s better moments. It provides us an
entirely too good of a look at the rigid fiberglass shark, which is most
definitely not enhancing our suspension of disbelief. Don’t get me
wrong, I’d love dearly to have this thing decorating my house, but
frighteningly realistic it ain’t.

Mike appears. Kay supposedly has been spending all her
time with the shark, and he’s lonely. That sounds a little needy. How
long could the shark remain moribund without kicking the chum bucket? Ten
hours? Less, I’d think. Certainly it couldn’t be days or anything. If
Mike gets "lonely" after two or three hours, then this
relationship is a Lifetime Movie of the Week waiting to happen.

The two begin walking the shark around and it quickly
comes to *cough, cough* life. (Maybe it’s equipped with some
primordial instinct that alerts all sharks when there’s a Brody is in
the area.) Since we can see the entire length of the prop shark, there’s
no way for a grip to shove it their way, and so Mike and Kay get out of
the tank unscathed.

Kay gloats about having the only living great white in
captivity. Of course, catching ‘em is one thing; keeping ‘em alive,
another. "Don’t do anything that's gonna traumatize him," she
warns. Needless to say, this is setting up a later incident.

We cut to the performance of a jet-skier, heralding the
park’s opening day. He goes up one of those ramps. We cut to the other
side to watch him burst through a banner and fly towards the camera. It’s
3-Delightful! Meanwhile, a mob of kids is being escorted through the
facility by a big fuzzy Killer Whale mascot.

We blow some running time watching more of this stuff.
Look at the water skier! Look at the leaping dolphins! Look at the leaping
Shamu! Look at the splashing water hitting the camera! It’s a
3-Drenching!

This again raises the issue of the movie’s basic
schizophrenia. The bright, cheery Sea World material could be from a
typical ‘60s Disney live-actioner. I kept waiting for Alonzo Hawk to
show up talking about an upcoming mortgage payment and plans to take over
the park. The earlier beer-swilling and sex stuff, meanwhile, is right out
of a slice-of-life character drama, albeit in this case a PG one. Then
there’s, oh, yeah, the shark and all. What the heck? Try to be all
things to all people and you end up pleasing no one.

Leonard the Flunky runs up to consult with Bouchard.
Ticket sales are tremendous. However, the ballyhooed shark is still
confined in the research area. Bouchard orders the animal to be moved to a
public display tank. Leonard is confused, because they were supposed to
wait for Kay to assent to this. Bouchard does one of those "I’m the
boss," things and the order is given.

There are no doubt some regular visitors to the Jabootu
site who have tired of me harping on Hollywood’s lame portrayals of
businessmen. However, what am I to do? Such characters in the vast
majority of films cover a dynamic gamut ranging from ‘A’ (blindly
greedy) all the way to ‘B’ (positively evil). I guess the film
deserves some credit for having Bouchard fall into the less frequently
employed ‘A’ category. I suspect, however, that this decision
reflected mostly their disinclination to have their (at that time)
potential Oscar winner playing a completely bad guy.

Even with that stipulation, this scene illustrates another
common characteristic of movie businessmen: They’re unbelievably stupid.
The implication is that Bouchard runs the other Sea Worlds. Even if that’s
not true, he’s supposedly a sharp operator. Yet in movies, such
characters spend good money bringing in these experts, only to turn down
their counsel on an almost-uniform basis.

Even a man of average intelligence (and presumably
Bouchard’s smarter than that, if he’s amassed this fortune) would
realize how fragile the shark’s health might be at this point. But, of
course he orders the animal brought out to a public tank the moment his
head biologist has her back turned. How is it even possible he would do
something so stupid, only mere days after the fish was captured?

Beside, wouldn’t it make fiscal sense to wait?
Wouldn’t you want a hugely publicized unveiling of the shark? Wouldn’t
you want time to arrange for masses of news coverage, to bring in
scientists and celebrities? Wouldn’t you want to arrange to have
T-shirts and model sharks and other merchandise to sell? Besides,
obviously you’re going to sell a huge number of tickets the week the
park opens. Wouldn’t you want to save something to bolster public
attendance after the initial flurry of visitors had subsided?

Oh, well, enough beating my head against that wall again.
In any case, we cut to more water-skier action. Man, you just can’t get
enough of that sort of thing. You can’t! That’s why they make all
those movies that basically just show you two straight hours of acrobatic
water skiing, because it’s just that thrilling! Then we cut to dancers
in garish amusement park costumes—including one in a pig (?) mascot
outfit—performing a stylized square dance. Man, if that doesn’t say
‘Sea World,’ then I don’t know what does. Then it’s back to the
water skiers! How much excitement can one person take?!

Then we follow as some pretty teen girls enter the
underwater tunnel complex. This involves some extras walking around and
looking up at some of the worst bluescreen effects of the last thirty
years or more. I’m not kidding, this is really appalling stuff.

They reach a sort of underwater haunted house chamber. An
animatronic eel shoots out of the wall. Oooh! Aaaah! Then an ersatz
tentacle wraps around one of them. Aaaah! Oooh!

Next we cut to Kay and Mike feeding the dolphins. They’re
discussing his leaving for Venezuela again. Man, you can fit a whole lot o’
padding in a 98-minute movie, can’t you? Anyway, this is thankfully a
brief bit, although that makes it all the more pointless. Nor was I much
reassured by the line, "You and I are going to have to have a serious
conversation some time, about what’s really going on." What, again?!

Anyhoo, Mike is called away. Then Kay hears an
announcement over the PA system that the shark’s available for viewing.
Needless to say, she sprints off angrily. (Again, you have a
world-exclusive attraction, and you announce it’s opening over the PA
system?! And here’s an idea: Maybe you’d want to set this amazing
attraction off somewhere so you could sell tickets to see it! Morons. The
filmmakers, not Bouchard. Well, OK, yes, Bouchard. But only because the
filmmakers made him such an idiot.)

Cue segue to the indicated venue, where the shark has
indeed been put in the display tank Bouchard indicated. I seem to remember
this sight prompting a number of audience guffaws, because we cut to about
the most idiotic display tank for a dangerous shark imaginable.

It’s not the traditional contained tank surrounded by
Plexiglas walls to allow for unimpeded viewing. Instead, and I’m not
joking, it’s a viewing pool with walls standing maybe knee-high to an
adult. (I’m assuming the pool itself is sunken to some extent.) Here’s
the best part, however: The wall iscompletely devoid of
guardrails!

Good grief, this thing’s a lawsuit waiting to happen!
Imagine some moron sticking his hand into the water and getting it bitten
off. Imagine a kid climbing up on the wall for a better look, and falling
in. Hell, the wall’s so low you could fall in by just leaning forward
and being nudged by the people behind you.

So why would the filmmakers use such a patently
inappropriate, not to mention retarded, location for this sequence? First,
because this scene once more features the rigid fiberglass shark. This
prop is clearly propelled by some human agency, and the normal sort of
tank with transparent walls would make this much harder to disguise.

Second, it’s so that Kay can run up and dramatically
jump into the tank when the guy lets go of the prop and it floats on its
side to indicate the shark’s demise. (If you watch Armstrong after she
pretends to walk the shark for a bit, she actually manually turns the prop
with her hands and then holds it in the traditional upside-down dead fish
position. I’m not kidding, this prop doesn’t do anything.)

FitzRoyce shows up in time to witness this tragic event.
Well, there you go. She warned her staff not to traumatize the shark. Boy,
Bouchard’s going to feel pretty stupid now, what with flushing this
multi-million dollar attraction down the drain. Oopsie-doopsie.

By the way, is it good publicity for your Sea World
facility to have several dozen customers watch the park’s most prized
exhibition literally die before their eyes? I’m not a businessman, and
let me be very clear on that, but I wouldn’t have thought so.

Also, Kay’s reaction is to be sad. That isn’t right.
What she should be is monumentally pissed off. I don’t know how binding
her contract is—she notes at one point that she has six months left on
the job—but I can’t imagine she wouldn’t immediately storm over to
wherever Calvin is (and why wasn’t he watching their valuable new
exhibit, or at least the crowds around it?) and give him first a piece of
her mind and then her notice. That he ignored her advice on such a matter,
and in such a peremptory fashion, would constitute about the worst insult
he could deliver to her.

Cut over to Sean and Kelly. She’s leading him to the ‘bumper
boats’ found in a small section of the Lagoon. Sean resists going into
the water again, but she goads him into it. (You’d think that after they
already found a potentially man-eating shark in the Lagoon’s waters, he’d
protest more vehemently. Ah, the things we do for love.)

Back to Davy Jones’ Locker o’ Bad Bluescreen Effects.
The previously seen young ladies are looking out some portals at the
myriad fish and such. Gazing upon a rather normal gray fish, one notes
that it "looks like a butterfly." (??) I’m assuming the script
called for a more colorful fish to appear in the window at this juncture,
but they didn’t get around to arranging it. However, you’d think they
have the wit to rewrite the line, or loop over it later.

Round about the third port window the camera zooms in on,
a prop representing the missing worker’s decayed, mutilated body drifts
right up against the pane. It’s 3-Decomposition! In a truly weird
moment, we cut to a close-up of somebody’s hand. It presses against the
back of one of the girls, pushing her face against the pane opposite the
corpse’s. What the heck is happening there?

Cut to the facility lab. The worker’s body has been
brought there for examination. (Never at any point from here to the end of
the movie do we get any indication that any outside authorities have been
called in. Wouldn’t the body obligate them to do so? You’d think.)
They pull the sheet back—its fabric is speckled and splotched with
blood, which seems a little unlikely given the circumstances—revealing a
surprisingly gruesome prop corpse.

Kay steps forward to examine the body, over Mike’s
protests. Why the hell would she be examining the body? Again,
where are the cops and someone from the coroner’s office? Gazing upon
the massive wound that trails down from the shoulder (I guess the shark
was traveling sideways when it hit), she’s shocked nearly speechless.
Presumably referring to the bite radius indicated by the wound, she holds
her hands about a yard apart. She and Mike than run off to find Bouchard.

Of course, this is when the real shark independently
reveals its presence. (What, you thought they would base a Jaws movie on a
measly ten-foot shark? One that dies forty minutes before the movie is
over? C’mon, weren’t you paying attention when I wrote about the
Little Shark?) This occurs when the Control Room finally notices
some strange readings from the massive filtration pipe.

That, of course, is where the real shark has been hiding
all this time. See, the water pushing through the pipe would allow the
shark to stay put and still breathe. I guess that would allow it to lower
its metabolism, explaining first why there’s any fish left in the Lagoon
and why no one’s seen the big shark yet. As we’ll see, this thing
couldn’t move around much and remain unseen.

Economically, this all makes sense. The film’s reduced
budget would have only allowed them so much Big Shark action. Thus, like
many a ‘50s sci-fi cheapie, which the film will increasingly resemble
from here on out, they contrived to save showing their monster until the
latter part of the film, to provide for a (supposedly) cool climax.

Meanwhile, Bouchard is showing FitzRoyce and Jack the park’s
pretty nifty underwater restaurant. The waters outside the large bay
windows boast a number of sharks. FitzRoyce asks how they are contained.
Bouchard explains that there’s a bubble barrier; the sharks don’t like
the bubbles and steer clear of it. I’m not sure if that’s valid or
not, but we’ll see why they set this up in just a bit. Anyway, he gets a
call from Flunky Leonard about the possibly malfunctioning pump and orders
it shut down until it can be examined.

We cut to the pipe, and espy a big shark tail inside the
structure, cueing Williams’ Shark Theme. As the hum of the pump stops,
the tail begins agitating, and we see that the beast seems to be moving
outside. (Actually, this impossible; great white sharks can’t move
backwards because their fins are inflexible. By swinging her tail back and
forth, the shark would just be causing its head to smack into the front
wall of the pipe.)

Back in the restaurant, Kay and Mike hurriedly arrive. Kay
delivers her news, intercut with shots of the Big Shark extricating itself
from the filtration pipe. This film, presumably as an economy measure, not
to mention the demands of working in 3-D, generally uses a miniature model
(which I imagine still could have been fairly large) of the Big Shark
rather than the life-sized props utilized by its predecessors. There’s
also, naturally, a full-sized shark head used to interact with the actors.

Although these props remain primitive compared to the ones
in the previous films, which themselves were the subject of carping from
some corners, it does do a couple of tricks. I know, because we are
treated to seeing them again and again. First, no doubt to the delight of
Lyz Kingsley, this is the first fake shark in a Jaws movie whose lips draw
back to expose its teeth, as those of a real shark can.

Second is that the prop’s tail can undulate back and
forth. This effect cannot really be called convincing, especially given
the way the mechanics visibly move under shark’s apparent foam rubber
skin. Instead, it suggests something on the order of a toy shark sold in
the ‘70s to menace G.I. Joe, one which possesses an advertised
"Powerful Swimming Action" to counter the bearded war hero’s
awesome Kung Fu Grip.

Kay, meanwhile, is answering Bouchard’s query about what
killed the worker. "It was a shark," she explains, "with a
bite radius about a yard across." FitzRoyce is understandably
incredulous. "Don’t be silly," he snorts. "That would
indicate a shark of some 35 feet in length*." Kay concurs. "You
said it exactly," she answers. What I found impressive is that way
even two sorta-experts can instantly extrapolate a bite radius into an
entirely body length. I wonder if they could convert the figures into
metric ones as ably?

[*This fact will not surprise the more analytical viewers
of Jaws 2. As I noted in my review of that film, they rather
comically gave that film’s 25-foot great white facial burn scars in an
attempt to make it look ‘scarier’ than the first film’s more prosaic
25-foot great white.

This film is also trying to ‘top’ the earlier sharks,
by making its main menace even more ludicrously huge. Of course, this is
silly. Why being eaten by an impossibly-gigantic 35-foot shark would be
more terrifying than being consumed by a merely highly-improbable
25-footer remains unexplained.

Now, let me be clear: I am not a professional filmmaker.
However, this would be my advice to those making any future sequels to Jaws:
If you concentrate on producing a film as well-made as Spielberg’s, you
probably can skip trying to figure out whether your particular shark
should be equipped with poisonous metal teeth or Kung Fu Grip.]

After relating the beast’s enormous size, Kay drops a
bombshell, which is that the big shark is…are you ready?…bum bum bum!…the
little shark’s mother!! Well, OK, that’s less a bombshell than a
limp firecracker. Still, it’s played up quite a bit. You might also be
wondering what exactly lead her to that conclusion. I guess it’s just
the sort of thing a woman would ‘know.’ Either that, or she’s seen Gorgo.

The others continue to scoff, however. Not for long,
though, as we next get one of the film’s endearingly goofy shots: A POV
of the Mama Shark approaching the restaurant. First the camera moves
through a sheet of bubbles, i.e., the aforementioned shark shield, which
is meant to explain how this massive fish can suddenly appear out of
nowhere. Sure enough, after we get a POV shot of a shocked Quaid pointing
towards the camera (i.e., towards the shark) we cut to a standard shot
revealing the gigantic Mama Shark hovering outside the aforementioned bay
window.

Well, no, actually, we don’t. Sadly, they apparently
couldn’t afford such a shot. So instead of seeing the giant shark framed
in the window with our characters in the foreground—which actually would
have looked pretty cool—we cut to an out-in-the-water close-up of the
creature and its receding lips. This is significantly less dramatic, as it
leaves us nothing to scale the shark against.

Everyone splits up. Bouchard calls the Control Room,
ordering them to evacuate the underwater tunnels and close the park. (Carl
Fink and correspondent Bill Leary both note that Bouchard deserves props
for not trying to pull a Mayor Vaughn here. Of course, he also has more
personal liability in this situation than Vaughn did in Amity.) Cut to
Mike and Kay run topside to warn the currently performing water skiing
troop. In a scene right out of Bullitt—well, sort of—Mike
commandeers a popcorn vendor’s golf cart to speed to the performance
arena. I’m quite serious when I say that they might have employed this
expedient because they could afford to spill twenty dollars worth of
popcorn, yet lacked the funds for the more traditional-but-costlier fruit
cart.

Upon reflection, moreover, the scene seems not so much of Bullitt
as from the popular Mystery Science Theater 3000 subject Space
Mutiny. Certainly a similar amount of mirth is derived from watching
Mike ‘speed’ around in vehicle somewhat slower than he’d be on foot.
In any case, the excitement climaxes when he attempts to take a turn and
the unwieldy cart falls over onto its side. Luckily, Mike escapes this
fearsome crash relatively unscathed. (Sadly, they lacked the wit—or
perhaps the cash—to have the cart explode into flames once he’d gotten
clear.)

Oddly, even though Mike, Kay, FitzRoyce and Jack have made
it upstairs and to the borders of the Lagoon, no one’s yet thought of
using the PA system to ask people to leave the water or make their way to
the exits. Instead, once Mike reaches the water sport auditorium, he grabs
the announcer’s microphone to try to warn the currently-performing
skiers.

They can’t hear him, though, as they’re being towed
behind a rather noisy speedboat. However, the first two pairs of skiers
spot the shark on their own. They tumble into the water in front of the
reviewing stand, and reach safety when the shark continues on.

We soon see that it’s taken up pursuit of a line of
eight woman skiers. Soon the shark’s fin is trailing right behind the
oblivious performers. And I mean, right behind them. Which is…sort
of weird. Given the placement of the dorsal fin on such an animal’s
body, coupled with this particular fish’s size, that means the shark’s
dangerous part—what scientists would call its ‘mouth’—is roughly
fifteen feet in front of the skiers.

Part of the act, however, requires the skiers to turn
around in unison. Whereupon they see the monster fin a mere foot or two
behind them. They panic, naturally enough, and also plunge into the water.
We cut to the classic Jaws’ Looking Up At The Thrashing Legs POV Shot™,
which, tradition dictates, means the shark should be right underneath
them.

Let me pause here to discuss the one element of Jaws 3-D
that stuck with me during the entire twenty years since I first viewed it.
However, this requires a bit of historical place setting, as well as some
personal reminiscing.

At the time I saw this movie, I would have been
approaching the age of twenty. The year, as indicated above, was 1983. I’ve
been watching classic (and not-so-classic) monster movies since I was a
wee bairn. I teethed my cinematic tastes on the old Universal classic
horror films, followed in turn by the sci-fi drive-in fare of the ‘50s.
By the age of twenty, at which I saw Jaws 3-D, my tastes were
pretty well set.

I was not nearly as much of a fan of then-contemporary
horror films. To be exact, I mean those made following 1968’s TheNight of the LivingDead. (NotLD being the film, I’d
argue, that constitutes the fault line between the classic horror era and
the modern one.) In the main, if not without exception, I disliked the
tendency towards cruelty and nihilism that marked that period’s horror
films. This reached its acme, unsurprisingly, during the late ‘70s and
early ‘80s, these being the heyday of the Slasher flick.

However, the single element of modern horror films that
irked me most—and sadly, continues to do so in most horror fare produced
twenty years later—was the way that everyone in the film cast would be
bumped off save for maybe one or two characters. This was neatly summed up
when Roger Ebert coined of the phrase ‘Dead Teenager Movie.’ (Of
course, adults in such didn’t necessarily fare any better.)

As someone who enjoyed a more traditional definition of
suspense—by which I mean not necessarily knowing at the beginning of
every given scene that someone was due to suffer a bloody demise—I found
this trope extremely annoying. As an example, for years this diminished my
regard for Ridley Scott’s Alien, a film that used typically
flimsy pretexts for sending its characters to their dooms. Harry Dean
Stanton being sent after a cat, anyone?

As such, I never went to see Slasher movies. I missed
seeing Halloween in the theaters, although in that case it was
probably because I wasn’t yet of an age to see ‘R’ rated movies. By
the time I was, when many of my friends went periodically to see the
glossier such fare, such the as interminable Friday the 13th
movies, I stayed home.

Those rare occasions when I was talked into viewing such
fare only reinforced my feelings on the matter. I went to see Halloween
2, and it ended up being the only movie I ever walked out on. (I think
this followed the loving close-up of a crying tot with a razor blade
embedded in his mouth.) Another time, we rented a flick called Humongous,
seeking some low-grade laughs. The film proved so stupid, mean, and
joyless that a good dozen of us sat in uncomfortable silence as the
cassette unspooled on the VCR. We were a seasoned group who never let the
opportunity for a stupid pun escape us, but we were defeated by the movie’s
sheer dreariness.

Being a committed nerd, of course, I pontificated at
length on these matters whenever the opportunity presented itself. (As, in
fact, I am doing again all these years later.) I was completely serious
about all this and, I’m sure, relatively humorless.

The point of all this is the following: Despite years
spent bitching about movies in which the cast was systematically used as
mere body fodder, I finally saw a film that elicited exactly the opposite
reaction from me, annoying with how few people it killed off. That
motion picture, lest this has somehow escaped you, was Jaws 3-D.

Prior to this Melville-esque digression, we were
discussing the film’s massive shark being directly under eight woman
treading water in the middle of the Lagoon. Believe it or not, every
single one of these women makes it out of the water alive. Not a bite mark
among them. This follows the four other people who similarly found
themselves floundering in the water but had escaped harm.

I was amazed by my reaction to this. I had spent literally
years complaining about movies that killed off characters like clockwork,
and now I had finally seen one where the opposite is true. It’s not so
much that the body count was so low—although at this point, an hour and
seven minutes in, this super-sized shark had managed to kill one workman
and perhaps the two thieves and the grouper (although certainly the baby
shark was eating something)—but that it was hard to take seriously as a
menace a big-ass shark who had eight people literally fall right on top of
it into the water, but couldn’t manage to snag a single victim.

Following an insert shot of the really, really fake fin
used earlier to indicate the smaller shark, which in any case doesn’t
remotely match the one we just saw behind the swimmers, the Mama Shark
magically Offscreen Teleports over to the (are you sitting down?) bumper
boat area. Taking the attraction’s title seriously, she indeed targets a
boat and bumps it. This, I hope you don’t die of amazement upon
learning, is Sean and Kelly’s.

With two more completely helpless victims now thrashing in
the water, the shark’s head bobs up, in what I believe in the only shot
in the movie in which it rises up from the water. (That’s pretty lame,
when you think of it. I think you have a right to expect more
shark-bobbing than that in a Jaws film.) In any case, the shark knocks
Kelly to one side, then drags her around underwater for a bit. Yet in the
end, however, she only receives a gash on her leg and does find herself
being pulled to safety. The angle of the wound, moreover, in no way
corresponds to her position when she received it.

Having been denied sustenance once again (how the hell did
this shark ever get that big if it can’t even catch one of a bunch of humans
bobbing in the water?), the shark fin turns its disembodied attention to a
nearby floating platform. The half-dozen people on it panic, and then,
since the structure is rather unsafely constructed of balsa wood—a fact
for which indisputable visual evidence is provided—plunge through its
floor and down into the water.

Despite the complete absence of the shark, we do briefly
see a cloud of blood at one point. Maybe the shark wounded another person,
or perhaps someone got cut as they fell through the platform’s floor.
However, we’ll be generous and say that of the six or so people who
found themselves in the water with absolutely no avenue of escape, the
shark actually managed to snag one. Admittedly, there is little direct
evidence for this contention, but I’m actually starting to feel sorry
for the old girl, so we’ll toss her a bone.

Another farcical moment occurs when Liz asks Kay if the
tunnel connecting the Lagoon to the performing animals’ housing pools
should be opened. See, prized porpoises Sandy and Cindy are currently in
the Lagoon, too, and thus at risk. Kay sighs and orders the gate to remain
closed, saying that they can’t allow the shark to possibly get through
the tunnel. As she says this, they cut to the tunnel, confirming our
impression that the passage is laughably too small for there to be even
the remotest chance the shark could squeeze through it.

Mike sees off Sean, who’s going in the ambulance with
Kelly. Meanwhile, Bouchard (finally!) uses the PA system to announce that
the park’s being closed for the day. However, I was bewildered by the
fact that actor Gossett chooses to employ here a thick Southern accent
that he evinces at no other time in the movie. Perhaps the part was
originally meant to posses such an accent. And maybe this scene was shot
early in the production, before they decided that the accent Gossett
brought to the table was too inane to use. That’s the only explanation I
can think of, anyway. (Of course, then they should have just looped over
the dialog in post-production.)

Despite the fact that it had to be ten or fifteen minutes
ago that Bouchard ordered the underwater tunnels cleared, everyone we saw
down there earlier still appears to be strolling around. Bouchard’s
notice finally has them moving to the exits, but it’s too late.

At this point the film turns into a really, really cheap
‘70s-style disaster movie. The shark appears in a blaze of particularly
suspect bluescreen effects and bumps into the tunnels, creating leaks that
pressurized water pours through. Everyone screams like they’re in a
Godzilla movie and begin to run for the hub at the middle of the tunnels.

Bouchard, meanwhile, orders the sector’s watertight
doors closed. In even lamest disaster movie, one or two people would be
trapped and drown, but here, of course, everyone reaches safety. There’s
a ‘suspense’ moment when one set of doors won’t close because there’s
water pouring through them, leading me to surmise that these weren’t, in
fact, the best engineered ‘watertight’ doors ever constructed.

In any case, the end result is a bunch (well, maybe twenty
or so) of screaming people caught in a small, sealed chamber, chest-high
in water. I’m no engineer, as is obvious from my ignorant idea that
watertight doors might be designed to close against water pressure.
Moreover, I was naively surprised at the fact that the Control Room couldn’t
activate a pump that would empty the chamber of water, especially as the
power is still on. Also, a spare supply of oxygen seemed, to me at least,
like it would have been a good idea. Shows you what I know.

Mike and his crew work furiously on a ‘patch’ to fix
the tunnel, which once welded into place will allow them to evacuate the
trapped patrons. (As I noted before, no outside authorities ever make more
than a token appearance here. For instance, we never see one even taking a
statement from any of the principals.) Uh, wasn’t just one tunnel
compromised? Couldn’t they open one of the watertight doors leading into
another tunnel and get them out that way? Oh, wait. From what they
describe, actually, I guess none of the watertight doors will open until
the entire tunnel complex has been repressurized. Yes, that sounds like a
flawless system, all right.

By the way, it’s pretty convenient that shark inflicted
the sort of completely localized damage that could be repaired by welding
a patch over it, isn’t it? (Still, as least it was polite enough to go
away after inflicting just the correct amount of damage.) Oh, and in case
you care, Kay offers to go to Venezuela with Mike, and after his job there
is complete, he’s to follow her to her chosen destination next. Wow,
glad that’s been taken care of!

Anyhoo, the Disaster Movie portion of the movie is pursued
for a while. Flunky Leonard gives the Obligatory Press Conference on the
situation, then we cut again to the cold, wet and terrified patrons
trapped in the waterlogged chamber, etc.

FitzRoyce presents a plan to Bouchard on how to deal with
the shark. His idea is to lure it back into the filtration pipe. Once it’s
in there, the backwash gate (look, just go with it) will be closed,
trapping the beast in these narrow confines. Meanwhile, a work crew can
repair the damaged tunnel and free the trapped visitors.

The others, of course, wonder how he plans to get the
shark back in there. He and Jack, he answers, will use themselves as bait.
(Bum bum bum!) They’ll tie a line to the interior of the pump
chamber and pull themselves along against the current, drawing the shark
behind them. At the far end of the pipe is an access ladder. They’ll
climb to safety, the Control Room will close the hatch behind the shark,
and there you go.

As they prepare to implement their plan, Jack asks
FitzRoyce to focus solely on luring in the shark, rather than filming its
approach as well. Of course, worrying about such things violates the
Adventurer’s Code. Besides, FitzRoyce adds, the film will make them a
fortune. Does anyone not see where this is going? I mean, the shark’s
got to kill somebody who’s an actual character. Right? Right?

FitzRoyce and Jack enter the water and take their
positions. We see FitzRoyce tug once or twice on the rope he’ll use to
evade the shark. "They’re testing the lifeline to see if it’s
secure," a watching technician explains. That’s the kind of
expertise a professional adventurer brings to the table, I guess.

This accomplished, the pair use sound and fish blood to
attract Mama Shark. (If that’s all it took, couldn’t they have used an
underwater speaker and released the fish blood remotely?) This works quite
quickly and their plan goes into effect. Jack swims to a safe position
from which he films the shark approaching the tunnel. FitzRoyce, for his
part, begins pulling himself along the pipe, all while luring Mama Shark
deeper inside. Once it’s all the way in, Jack closes the gate, trapping
it.

With the shark safely contained, Brody is given the word
to dive to the tunnel and proceed with his repairs. Meanwhile…man, this
still pisses me off twenty years later.

See, FitzRoyce ends up getting whacked because the nylon
rope he’s pulling himself along suddenly breaks. This leaves him at the
mercy of the water pressure, the force of which shoots him right down the
shark’s throat. Well, no, actually, that’s not what happens. Despite
the fact that the pump is supposed to be on, propelling "a million
Galleons" of water an hour, FitzRoyce floats in place with marked
ease. In the end, though, he does go whole, and wholly, down the shark’s
gullet.

Here’s the thing. I didn’t buy this two decades ago,
and I’m not buying it now. This is one of the laziest bits of writing I
think I’ve ever seen. I’m sorry, there’s no way a nylon rope just
suddenly parts. It would have to be heavily frayed or something before
hand. Which is what still bugs me. See, FitzRoyce is supposed to be
a pro at this stuff. Moreover, he has an underling fully committed to his
employer’s welfare.

The point is that people like this don’t go into the
field until they’ve checked and rechecked their equipment. That sort of
thing is pretty much what defines one as being a professional. Therefore
this scene is as believable to me as, say, Quint going after the shark in
the first movie, only to learn once he’s at sea that he’d forgotten to
bring along those yellow barrels. This is some of the shoddiest writing I
think I’ve ever seen, much less in a marginally expensive film.

In a bit so lame it’s literally laugh provoking,
FitzRoyce’s pulls out a rather inadequate bang stick and uses it on the
shark. (Yeah, don’t go for its eye or anything.) Needless to say, this
has little effect, other than producing another low-grade 3-D moment when
the stick is shoved at the camera. Then he beats on its nose with his
camera. Meanwhile, I was wondering why he didn’t just swim over the
shark’s head and away from its mouth. There’s enough room for him to
do so, but not enough for the beast to maneuver after him.

Instead, as indicated, he magically ends up entirely down
the shark’s throat. He tries to swim back outside, but the creature’s
teeth keep closing, threatening to cut him in half before he can make his
escape. (The inside of the creature, from which this bit is shot, seems to
be made from foam rubber. The effect is like watching a particularly nasty
episode of H.R. Pufnstuf.)

The remainder of the scene is confusing. There’s a cloud
of blood, although whether it’s the sharks or FitzRoyce’s remains more
than a little vague. I think the idea is that in his struggles, FitzRoyce’s
scuba hose comes loose and he drowns while still swallowed whole.

Meanwhile, Brody is welding the tunnel patch in place. Kay
goes to join him and provide whatever assistance she can, because, you
know, she’s all empowered and self-actuated and stuff.

Topside, Jack has learned that FitzRoyce never made it
back up and begins freaking out. Down in the Control Room, meanwhile,
Bouchard orders the pump shut down, which would suffocate the trapped
shark. "Are you sure?" a technician asks, despite the fact this
is clearly the most logical plan.

Amusingly, the film’s suggestion seems to be that
blowing the trapped shark up would be the more intelligent course. (Hell,
why not nuke the beast and be done with it?) Bouchard is made to seem ‘cheap’
when he refuses to do so because the filtration pipe would cost millions
of dollars to replace. Of course, this is the sort of movie where
characters like Bouchard make the wrong call on every single decision they
make. This one, naturally, will prove no different.

As noted before, great whites, like most sharks, can’t
swim backwards. Mama Shark not only does so again, but somehow forces the
gate open by brushing on it with her tail. Whatever. In any case, the
result is that the shark is back on the loose. "We gotta warn [Mike
and Kay]!" Bouchard exclaims. Wow, nothing gets past you, Slick.

Despite the warning signals, Mike stays at his post, as
the patch is almost secure. Suddenly the shark appears. In one of the
series’ genuine contributions to our knowledge of sharks, we hear the
beast roar. (This trait was explored further in the following film.)
Despite this, Mike only escapes because Kay is there to warn him. Good
thing she decided to join him.

Our Heroes are saved when, and I kid you not, Sandy and
Cindy the dolphins suddenly swim to the rescue. (By the way, remember that
maybe victim I spotted the shark before? I’m taking it back. So far it’s
gotten perhaps three entire guys on its own—and the first one it didn’t
eat much of—and another who apparently swam into its mouth under his own
power.) Mike and Kay escape, but it appears *gasp* that one of the
dolphins gives her life in the breach. This occurs when the porpoise
chooses to thrust itself right in front of the shark’s mouth. Yes, that’s
a wise strategy, oh super-intelligent sea mammal.

There’s a vertical access tunnel leading up into the
control room. Mike and Kay make it inside, but not before the shark gets
some of its teeth between the outer hatch and the doorjamb. I looked at
this a number of times, and the angle at which this could happen remained
clearly impossible. In any case—and I don’t want to shock the hell out
of you—Our Leads aren’t dealt a horrible death by what has to be one
of the most ineffectual monsters in movie history. Instead, they get the
door shut, pressurize the access tunnel and climb up to the Control Room.

"Have you pressurized [the tourist] tunnels
yet?" Mike gasps. Upon being told that they have, he orders,
"Then get those people out of there!" Apparently nobody had
thought to do this yet, but Mike’s command is quickly obeyed. Soon all
the trapped patrons are safe, their escape accompanied by a burst of Life
Affirming Music. I know you’re pleased.

However, the danger (yawn) isn’t over yet. In one of the
funniest process shots of the last three decades, the characters in the
Control Room watch in horror as a rigid, unmoving model of the Mama Shark,
bordered by a cartoonishly obvious bluescreen line, ‘approaches’ their
position. They don’t even bother to use one of the props that can swish
its tail. Even the novice moviegoers will quickly glean that the prop
shark was suspended in a fixed position before a stationary bluescreen and
then made to *cough* ‘move forward’ by the expedient of having
the camera zoom in upon it. It’s a truly risible effect.

Lest we somehow get past that image with our mouth-curling
muscles still undeployed, the filmmakers cannily provide close-ups of the
cast’s horrified reactions, all of which are thoughtfully portrayed—I
kid you not—in slow motion. This is right out of a Saturday Night
Live sketch. Seriously, did anyone bother to watch this film before
they released it to theaters? It’s hard to believe so.

With a raw reality seldom seen outside of a Terry Gilliam
cartoon, the ‘shark’ smashes into the Control Room’s Big Window,
which shatters in a bunch of 3-D animated fragments. Even the scale of the
shark vis-à-vis the window is completely off. The last half hour of this
movie is a veritable textbook of cinematic ineptitude.

Water floods into the room, although not quickly enough,
since then all of our characters would be killed. Bouchard manages to swim
an unconscious (certainly not dead, not in this movie) worker to safety. I
assume so, anyway, although we never see him again. Meanwhile, the shark—get
this—actually manages to eat one of the Control Room staffers.
Admittedly, this involves the use of a visibly bogus dummy, but still, it’s
an actual victim. Good for you, Sharkie.

Mike and Kay, meanwhile, are still in the room, having
re-donned their scuba masks. The shark, bottlenecked in the window frame,
of course caaan’t quite reach them*. This provides a contrast of
special effects. First, we do get a pleasing shot or two of the giant prop
head actually interacting with the actors. However, we also see the foam
rubber shark’s body (the dorsal fin of which, naturally, completely
fails to match at least two versions of it seen earlier) thrashing around
in a miniature of the Control Room building.

[*Another nod to Carl Fink, who notes that with the shark’s
body stuck this way, the animal should drown, as it’s not moving.
Admittedly, it does still wave its head back and forth a little, but I don’t
think that would suffice. I’m a little embarrassed to have missed that
one, actually.]

Meanwhile, in what amusingly is an almost exact recreation
of the shark death scene from the Euro Jaws knock-off The Last
Shark, the two notice FitzRoyce’s body bobbing around in the
creature’s Sid & Marty Krofft-esque throat. Helpfully, he’s
holding in his outstretched hand one of the previously established Mills
bombs.

Which raises two questions: First, how would FitzRoyce
have died so suddenly that he wouldn’t have been able to pull the bomb’s
pin? Second, how did his body end up back up by the creature’s mouth
when we just saw it swallow someone else entirely? We do see another body
floating around, but it doesn’t remotely match the one we just saw it
chomp on. Although, I guess, that’s hardly conclusive with this movie.
If that was supposed to be the munchee, then again, how is this thing
alive? It can’t even manage to swallow food it just had in its mouth.

Anyway, after further mock peril of the "Whoa, the
shark almost bit me that time!" variety, Mike manages to hook
onto the grenade’s pin with a stick and pull it free*. Ka-boom-o!! The
result is the fakest 3-D shot in the movie, in which fragmented pieces of
the shark’s jaws (get it?) fling out towards the audience.

****

[*By the way, was this scene a berserk homage to the old
Ideal Jaws game? It came with a plastic shark with a spring-loaded
jaw that snapped shut on a timer. The object was to use a small plastic
gaff to remove as many small toy objects from the shark’s gullet as you
could before the time ran out.]

****

Our Two Leads swim up to the surface of the Lagoon, where
they are silhouetted against the golden sunrise. (Oh, brother!) "What
about the others?" Kay inquires anxiously. "Calvin is
fine," Mike answers. How the hell would he know?

However, the film has one more thrill for us. Remember the
dolphin apparently killed by the shark before? Well, it leaps up from the
water, alive! (Cue Loud, Triumphant Music.) Yeah!! The dolphin’s alive!
Woo-Hah!! This leads, impressively enough, to the single worst effects
shot in the movie, as poorly-composited images of the two dolphins are
matted over the image of Armstrong and Quaid, upon which this snapshot is
captured in a freeze-frame.

*****

All right!! Screw you, Jaws movies!! I took my punches,
but I survived. I took the worst all three of you had to throw at me, and…huh?
What’s that? ‘Jaws: The’ whatnow? You’re kidding. With who?
Michael Caine?! $%@*#!~>.

Sigh. Guess I’ll see you back here again next week,
folks.

Afterword:

Jaws 3-D didn’t need to be such a disaster. The
producers of the first two Jaws films, David Brown and Richard Zanuck,
recognized how ludicrous it would be to trot out the killer shark idea yet
again. Their idea was to make the third movie a spoof, ala Airplane! Their
proposed title was "Jaws 3, People 0," and they believed this
concept would allow them to wrack up a hefty profit while also allowing
for a potentially good movie.

Sadly, the executives at Universal lacked their foresight.
Considering that Airplane! grossed $83 million domestically (and a
further fortune on home video), more than double what Jaws 3-D
made. On the other hand, the idea of making a comical Jaws film was
certainly achieved.

Let me play Devil’s Advocate for a moment, however. From
any objective standpoint, Jaws 2 is clearly a better film than Jaws
3-D. The first sequel had a higher budget. Its director, Jeannot
Szwarc, was at least more talented than the latter’s Joe Alves. Jaws
2’s various other technical aspects are uniformly more competently
executed. John Williams provided its scored rather than the justly
anonymous Alan Parker. The shark action is at least less goofy than the
stuff seen here. Finally, it didn’t carry the flop sweat ambiance
provided by this film’s reliance on a half-assed gimmick like 3-D.

Still and all, there’s more stuff I genuinely like in Jaws
3-D than in Jaws 2. In the end, I liked a number of this film’s
characters, which is quite a bit more than I can say of any of the stiffs
we met in the earlier chapter. As I stated more than once during this
review, I would have liked to have seen a movie with the main four leads
that omitted the killer shark and focused more on their regular lives. The
idea of seeing a similar film based on the slice-of-life adventures of the
kids we had foisted upon us in Jaws 2, however (and that includes
its younger versions of Mike and Sean), fills me with the sort of loathing
and dread one usually only encounters when reading an H.P. Lovecraft
story.

The setting of this film was fresher than Jaws 2’s
uninspired return to Amity, even if the performing animal and water skiing
stuff was a tad overused. The cast is more appealing, although they are
given less to do. Roy Schieder and Lorraine Gary in the previous film
proved themselves skilled actors once again. However, they were inevitably
less effective then they were in the first movie. The more obscure actors
showcased in that movie, meanwhile, provided performances that might most
charitably be described as forgettable.

Conversely, it’s the relatively unknown actors in Jaws
3-D who provide the most enjoyable performances. MacCordindale, an
actor seen to best advantage in classical and period material, does what
he can to liven up the underwritten role of FitzRoyce. Unfortunately, the
task defeats him. I don’t blame him, however. After all, this is a film
series that similarly foiled Michael Caine.

Gossett, meanwhile, is on autopilot. His performance
suggests someone who spent half an hour each night memorizing the next day’s
lines, then went out to find something interesting to do. You can’t
really blame him, though. Bouchard is a useless, one-note character whose
only role is to complicate things by constantly making poor decisions. It’s
the kind of part an actor would get while guest starring on an episode of Murder,
She Wrote, and Gossett provides work about on that level.

The film was immensely luckier in the players chosen to
play its four romantic leads. In fact, if I were to complement anyone’s
work on the production, it would be that of casting director Randy Stone.
If you took any of the kids who played the teens in Jaws 2 and
plugged them in here, the result would be a flop of (even more) epic
proportions.

The actors not only act well, but act well together. Lea
Thompson, appearing in her first real acting gig, is given the least to
do. However, she’s quite believable in her burgeoning romance with Sean.
For what it’s worth, she plays a minx surprisingly well for someone who
become known for playing more wholesome roles.

John Putch, the actor playing Sean, has better luck. Like
Thompson, his character is of the second banana variety. Even so, he not
only gets to play off his romantic partner, but also shares a fair amount
of time opposite the leads. He and Quaid make quite believable brothers,
and perhaps more impressive is how well sketched his relationship with
Armstrong is. They clearly enjoy each other’s company, yet don’t
necessarily seem like people who would hang out together if not for being
connected by Mike.

I can’t really say enough for Quaid and Armstrong. While
I didn’t always buy her in her role of marine biologist—and that’s
at least as much the script’s fault as it is hers—they are utterly
credible as a couple. I do think Quaid’s the more talented of two,
although he hasn’t always evinced the best nose for projects. Still, at
least in the early part of the film (you know, before the sharks show up),
Armstrong really holds her own.

In the end, the film’s incidental material ironically
finds itself sabotaged by those elements that brought about the picture’s
existence in the first place. Not so our next subject, however. If Jaws
3-D is a field of manure with a few roses poking through the ordure,
then Jaws: The Revenge is…well, let’s just say you needn’t be
careful of thorns.

-Review by Ken
Begg

Thanks
again to the J-Team,
Minister of Proofing Carl Fink
& Shadow Ministers Bill Leary
and Kimberly Swygert for
their essential contributions,
especially during this month's
series of articles.